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THE year 2016 was a bullish year for online recruitment, even in South Africa. As our digital landscape continues to grow, so does the need for companies to employ an effective, engaging online recruitment strategy. Here are some of the top recruitment trends we saw in 2016.
Talent acquisition is a seller's market
The South African market is following the international trend, where candidates with skills and experience hold the power. This is particularly marked in sectors and industries where there is a shortage of skills.
This - coupled with the changing attitude towards work by millennials - has meant that recruiters have to spend much more time sourcing, but also selling opportunities to candidates. It is without a doubt a case of skilled, experienced and educated candidates choosing the roles and companies rather than the other way around.
Employer branding was massively important in 2016, and will continue to be so in 2017
We are seeing a shift in focus of the larger organisations, which focus on their employer value proposition as they vie for the attention of high quality candidates. This has come with a focus on selling their employer brand internally to existing staff, on their company websites and also on platforms like Careers24.
I expect to see this marriage of marketing and recruitment becoming more important for companies to remain competitive in a market where there is a shortage of skills, coupled with shorter tenures at companies. I expect that in 2017 smaller organisations will emulate what some of the larger blue chip companies are doing in the employer branding space.
Proactively recruiting through ‘passive candidates’ continued to be vital in 2016
South Africa finds itself in an environment where there is an immense shortage of skills, particularly in engineering, IT and the medical fields. Head-hunting of passive job seekers is vitally important to any recruiter, but success rates are highly dependent on a couple factors.
Generally speaking, there has to be a strong reason for skilled employees to move from one company to another – and in most cases it is not just about the money. Recruiters who successfully recruit passive jobseekers not only understand the wants and needs of the candidate, but also know how to sell the opportunity outside of salary and benefits.
This is where concepts like the value of the work that a candidate would be doing, the way in which the company operates and how the company gives back to the greater community become very important.
There has been a slow but important growth of data analytics in recruitment this year
Data analytics in recruitment is in its infancy in general, and in South Africa few recruiters are using this successfully. But we are seeing that talent management software is focusing a lot more on data analytics to help recruiters plan their recruitment needs, not only by understanding their historical data, but also by being able to effectively forward plan based on staff attrition rates and behavioural trends such as absenteeism.
Many large software vendors, including IBM, are offering tools focused specifically around data analytics for recruitment.
Growth in first-time online recruitment users as well as a need for job security
The issue of youth unemployment can clearly be seen on Careers24, as we have seen an influx of first-time job seekers who, with access to smartphones and cheaper data (thanks to partnerships with Vodacom’s NXT LVL and Facebook’s internet.org, free job searching) are now able to access these services online for the first time.
On the reverse side of this, we have seen that skilled and experienced candidates are not job hopping in the same way as in previous years. This is an indication that job security in this tough economic time takes precedence over new opportunities.
A growth of corporate talent networks in a landscape where talent acquisition is a seller’s market
Talent networks are either online or offline networks designed to have conversations with prospective, but mostly passive, candidates with the aim to engage them with the organisation so that they can eventually become employees.
This is because there is a shift of power in the recruitment process, where candidates need to be convinced these networks offer the opportunity to have conversations with other candidates. Online tools such as peer-driven company reviews and company-driven corporate showcase sites are an extension of talent networks.
* Marc Privett is head of Fin24's sister website Careers24, South Africa’s biggest job site. He focuses on building and operationalising online businesses. Opinions expressed are his own.
